ST. LOUIS -- They did it for the old folks in Presque Isle, Maine, and White River Junction, Vt. They did it for the baby boomers in North Conway, N.H., and Groton, Mass. They did it for the kids in Central Falls, R.I., and Putnam, Conn. While church bells rang in small New England towns and horns honked on the crowded streets of the Hub, the 2004 Red Sox last night won the World Series, completing a four-game sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals with a 3-0 victory on the strength of seven innings of three-hit pitching by Derek Lowe. Playing 1,042 miles from Fenway Park, the Sox won it all for the first time in 86 long and frustrating seasons.
New England and a sprawling Nation of fans can finally exhale. The Red Sox are world champs. No more Curse of the Bambino. No more taunts of ``1918.'' The suffering souls of Bill Buckner, Grady Little, Mike Torrez, Johnny Pesky, Denny Galehouse, and the rest are released from Boston Baseball's Hall of Pain. .

They did something that had not been done in 86 years.
So now it's time to toast to Ted Williams, Tom Yawkey, Sherm Feller, Dick O'Connell, Haywood Sullivan, Joe Cronin, Eddie Collins, Tony Conigliaro, Ned Martin, Helen Robinson, Jack Rogers, and thousands of others who toiled for the team, but died before seeing their Sox win a World Series.

It's time for smiles on the faces of Carl Yastrzemski, Bobby Doerr, Dominic DiMaggio, Charlie Wagner, Gene Conley, Bill Monbouquette, Chuck Schilling, John McNamara, Joe Morgan, Earl Wilson, Mike Andrews, Reggie Smith, and hundreds of other men who wore the Red Sox uniform, but never won in October. And don't forget Curt Gowdy, Lou Gorman, Dick Bresciani, Joe Mooney, and all the ushers and Sox employees who are as much a part of Fenway Park as the Green Monster and Pesky's Pole. Time for the Nation to rejoice. Time to dance. Time to go to your window, open it wide, stick your head out and scream, ``The Red Sox won the World Series.'' No one's been able to do that in Boston since Woodrow Wilson was president.

The largest celebration in Boston's 374-year history is expected tomorrow when the team is honored with a parade and championship ceremony. If form holds, the Red Sox' gaudy, well-earned rings will be handed out in a ceremony April 11 when the 2004 World Series championship flag is raised above Fenway Park for the home opener. The team in the third base dugout for that historic event? The New York Yankees.

Avirama Golan's article is an ingenious Midrashic interpretation of a political slogan. Ms. Golan, like many of her leftist colleagues and ideologues, uses the Haskalah vision of Judaism and Jews as primitives in order to explain the objection to the uprooting of communities. It has nothing, she claims, to do with humanity. It has everything to do with messianism. Ms. Golan has it wrong on both counts. First, the resort to the "Jewish" argument is a resort to the collective memory that is the remaining link that binds Israeli Jewish society together. It is the memory of expulsions and evictions that is in play here. It is the invocation of the past that Zionism was supposed to cure that is in play here. That has absolutely nothing to do with the great secular bugaboo, messianism.

Second, it is true that a portion (not the overwhelming majority, by any account) of the religious Zionist community are followers of the messianic Zionism of the Rabbis Kook. However, opposition to the prime minister's disengagement plan needs not be based upon messianic concerns. Is Rav Ovadia Yosef a messianist? Rav Elyashiv? Uzi Landau? Many religious, university-trained residents of Yesha object to the Sharon plan per se because it gives Israel nothing in return. It demonizes other Jews. It starts a run amok back to the 1948 Armistice lines. These considerations have nothing to do with messianism or primitive thinking. Ms. Golan would serve her country better if she learned the lesson of nine years ago, and stopped demonizing, and distorting, other Jews.

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

One of the less noted aspects of the controversy over the Oslo Program, was that it played itself out on two levels. The better known was the political dimension. Was it possible to make peace with the Arabs based upon territorial compromise. However, there was a second, more insidious struggle that was carried on simultaneously. This was a war against Judaism, Jewish identity and the Jewish character of the State of Israel by the leading elements of the Israeli Left (and not only the radical Left). In other words, the Left had a cultural agenda. It was waging a Kulturkampf, against the very idea of a Jewish State. It was fighting for a 'State of al its citizens,' which was the de facto goal of the PLO from 1964, onwards, 'a bi-national, secular state.' The fact that the settlement movement, and the Israeli Right generally, are more religious (or traditional), assisted them. The 1996 elections were marked by crude, anti-semitic attacks on anything resembling Judaism or religious Jews-by elements within the Left (especially Meretz). Ben Dror Yemini, a columnist for Ma'ariv, noted that thisd attack on Judaism was a crucial factor in Netanyahu's victory. Once the Oslo War started in 2000, things began to change. The country, albeit in adversity, became more Jewish (as the Guttman studies pointed out-and as I have already had occasion to note). I, personally, was really hopeful that no matter what the political resolution of this ongoing struggle over borders and peace will be, at least the wars of the Jews would play themselves out among Jews, as Jews.

It breaks my heart to say it. I was wrong. I was dead wrong.

Today's Haaretz features an article by Avirama Golan, the same one I praised a few weeks ago. The piece is entitled The Jews versus the Israelis. It's a return to the same anti-semitic, self-hating screed that characterized the worst of the 1996 elections. Golan writes:On the bridge connecting Bnei Brak with the campus of Bar-Ilan University a new slogan was brandished last month: "Commander, we are Jews. I cannot do that." It is clear what the author of the slogan cannot do: he cannot evacuate settlements. But the refusal itself is less interesting than the reasoning. The soldier referred to in the slogan cannot carry out the order, not because his heart is broken at the site of families uprooted from their homes and not even because he is convinced in his right-wing worldview that the evacuation of Gaza is a calamity. All his reasons for refusal boil down to the loaded expression: "We are Jews." This expression is a code that differentiates, as in the pre-Zionist Diaspora, between a Jew and a "goy" and permits Jews everything by virtue of their status as victims. This is also the code that led complete communities of Jews away from the families of nations due to their messianic faith, shut them off in ghettos, led them to turn their backs on modernity and humanism, and subjected them to an exclusive fate determined by the hands of God, stripping man of the freedom to choose and responsibility for his fate.In other words, the 'Jew' is the anti-modern, irrational, primitive enemy of mankind who wishes to drag 'enlightened' Israelis to their doom. It is the 'Jew' who wants to prevent Peace due to his objection to the retreat from Gaza. It is the 'Jew' who cares not for the expellees. He only cares for his messianic blood-lust. The 'Jew,' Golan concludes, must be defeated: If the "We are Jews" argument gains the upper hand again over the aspiration for normal life, it will be the moment signifying the final tragic surrender of Zionism to Jewish messianic madness.

It is incredible, that just when Antisemitism has recaptured large sections of the world, it is being inspired and advanced by the Israeli left.

Sunday, October 24, 2004

The past few days I've been walking around on the brink of tears. Israel is undergoing contortions and convulsions around the Prime Minister's Disengagement Plan. The arguments are fast and furious, mostly furious.Meanwhile, I'm on the brink of tears. I'm on the brink of tears because noone is giving any thought to the fact that, no matter whether it's right or wrong, Jewish families are going to be ripped out of their homes and their synagogues destroyed. They won't have a home to go to. They will be refugees. The only thing is that this time in thirty five hundred years of lachrymose history, this will be carried out not by Assyrians, not by Babylonians, not by Syrian Greeks, not by Romans, not by BYzantines, not by Arabs, not by Visigoths, not by Swabian Germans, not by Franks, not by Poles, not by Ukranians, not by Italians, not by Spaniards, not by Czarist Russians, not by Nazis, not by Communists, not by Muslim...but by force of Jewish arms.

And noone cares or is horrified by that prospect. The media pundits and the politicians don't evince one iota of feeling for the people whose lives are about to be destroyed. After all, they're only settlers. As Shakespeare might have said:Hath not a Settler eyes? Hath not a settler hands, organs,dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed withthe same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as another Israeli Jew is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?The answer would appear to be in the negative. Otherwise, they too would be on the verge of tears, and not gloating.

Thursday, October 21, 2004

Words are superfluous at this sublime moment where hope, loyalty, devotion to a goal and stubborn persistence have paid off! Go Sox! Do it for Ted, for Pesky, for Yaz, for Pudge Fisk and for all the generations of loyal Boston Red Sox fans who've hoped through September and grieved through October. (BTW, in reference to the previous post, Rabbi Soloveitchik was a Red Sox Fan.)

Monday, October 18, 2004

All of the discussion of rabbis, leadership, Halakhah and spirituality highlights just how much I miss the Rov zt"l. I"m not just referring to a disciple who misses his rebbe. That feeling is always there.No, it's more than that. When I consider the multifold challenges facing the religious community in Israel, I realize just how much the kind of creative traditionalism, intellectual independence and modesty, and the rare mix of devotion to Halakha and striving for spirituality thatr characterized the Rov are needed today. The problem is that far too mant of his disciples here have bifurcated him. Some are Rashe Yeshiva who are only interested in his lomdus. Others think he was only a philosopher, and ignore the fact that he spent 95% of his time lovingly learning Talmud and Rambam. But he was all of that and it is as a totality that his teachings would make a difference.

Those who are stifled by an exclusively 'Do' and 'Don't' Orthodoxy, would have their Judaism invigorated with Man's spiritual quest for God. Those who are ensconced in philosophy would learn the humility and discipline of Talmud Torah and Halakhah as acts of revelation and surrender.

Those of us who try to see the total picture of who the Rov was and what he stood for have been too shy. We have a moral obligation to tell the truth about who he was and who he wasn't. Noone will get it totally. He was too complex for that. We can, however, balance the extremes. Aggressive advocacy of a teacher's heritage has marked the disciples of the Rambam, Ramban, Ari, GRA, Besht, Salanter and others. Within the frame of the Rov's belief in personal responsibility, we can do no less.

Saturday, October 16, 2004

Recently, my town's chat group has been all abuzz about the question of whether we need to have neighborhood rabbis, or even rabbis in our many synagogues. The responses have been fascinating and highlight a basic cleavage about the perception of the rabbi in Religious Zionist/Modern Orthodox circles in Israel.Most Israeli residents, along with a not insignificant number of Anglos, think that there is no need for neighborhood or synagogue rabbis. After all, there are plenty of congregants who can give short Divre Torah. There are not a few rabbis of whom shaylos can be asked. Who needs a rabbi? If you need someone at your simcha, the town rabbi tries to attend. Moreover, why should a community appoint someone to tell them how to think. The hallmark of Modern Orthdoxy is personal autonomy. Rabbis are for Haredim. Others approach from a different perspective. They offer that rabbis are not just DT or Psaq machines. They are there to provide guidance, solace, and to give mussar when required. Even asking shaylos requires a degree of intimacy with a specific person. Even when it comes to shul itself, a rav is desireable. Israelis all too often treat shul like 'Jiffylube' (not my analogy), 'in and out in an hour.' A rav can (if he's talented) help to make tefillah an act of worship and not just another thing on one' list of 'Things to Do.'Personally, I respond to both sides of the argument. However, when I consider some of the challenges facing Orthodoxy in contemporary Israel, I find myself coming down on the pro-rabbi side (despite, not because of, my own training). Whether we like it or not, Modern Orthodoxy is beset by serious crises (perhaps malaises) in Israel (if it ever really existed here). These crises are overlapping.

1) Spiritual- Our town has a very large number of young adults and youth who've 'doffed their kippah.' The establishment denies it, but all one has to do is walk around on Friday Night to see the evidence. Part of the problem is the lack of spirituality instilled in the schools and the shuls. Judaism without Halakhah is inauthentic. Without spirituality, however, it's a dead letter.2) Cultural- Let's face it, the rabbis we do have don't have secular educations. They are absolutely incapable of addressing the kinds of challenges that any of us face in the world. So, yes, we need rabbis of a particular type (YU?) to respectfully help negotiate and intelligently guide communities through the eddies and whirlpools that threaten to engulf us (feminism?),.3) Moral- In one of my last conversations with Rabbi Soloveitchik, zt"l (February, 1985), he mentioned to me that one of Orthodoxy's greatest failngs is triumphalist self-congratulation. I took him to mean that we're too happy with ourselves, individually and collectively. The function of a rav is to address that flaw (including the ways it expresses itself in himself). This will not make him popular. It will benefit the community and make him a rav.The accuracy of these observations is reinforced by the rapid spread of a part-time rabbinate throughout Israel. There is clearly a need. The challenge is to find and train the people to fill that need. So far, on that score, Israeli Orthodoxy is not doing very well.

For years I have been involved in any number of efforts at recreating a common, Jewish cultural language between religious and non-religious Jews in Israel. Sharing language, symbols, cultural resonances and historical memories is critical for this country tio survive. I even hoped that political discussions could be carried out by Right and Left, religious and non-religious Israelis through reference to the rich Jewish tradition that belongs to all Jews.

Yesterday's Haaretz featured an article by Avirama Golan that was a perfect example of that hope coming to fruition. An avowed Leftist, she engaged the political positions of the Right with thoughtful observations based upon Jewish sources, that were not distorted.

The late Mapam leader, Ya'aqov Hazan, once said that he wanted to create epiqorsim (educated heretics), but ended up with am ha-aratzim (ignoramuses). Looks like the tide might just be turning. No matter the political position espoused, this is a positive development from any angle. Imagine! Nachas from Haaretz!

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Edah recently teamed up with Ne'emane Torah va'Avodah for a series of mini-conferences on issues of concern to the Modern Orthodox community. I wasn't able to attend any of these, but according to Chakira, one session centered on the attitude of Jewish Law to Non-Jews. Predictably, the hero of the evening was the fourteenth century Provencal Halakhist, R. Menahem HaMeiri, who did take long strides toward viewing trinitarian Christianity as a non-idolatrous religion. From Chakira's report, however, it appears that Meiri's ideas were often harnassed to fit pre-existing ideological positions.This is not the place to discuss Meiri in full. However, his ideas are important enough (and distorted enough) that before invoking them, people should at least read the discussions by Jacob Katz, Ya'aqovBlidstein and Moshe Halbertal (among others).

Sunday, October 10, 2004

Friday's Jerusalem Post (it's not on the website) reported that Edgar Bronfman has adopted Yossi Beilin's idea that anyone who wants to be considered a Jew should be automatically so considered. He, however, goes one step forward. He declares that the traditional Jewish insistence that non-Jews undergo conversion in order to become Jews is similar to the "racist policies of the Nazis! I never know whether to laugh bitterly or cry when I read this type of thing. The laughter comes from the realization that if Bronfman and company have their way, it will be easier to become Jewish than it will to join the Harvard Club of New York or the Yale Skull and Bones Society. They, at least have standards. Bronfman (and Beilin) have so little regard for the Jewish people that they think that there need be no standards or commitments required of potentia entrants to the Jewish people. My grandmother would call that a 'sheyner gelechter.' In other words, if t weren't so tragically stupid, it would be comical.More to the point, how can anyone who has seen the ingathering of the exiles that has occurred here, comprehending Jews of every conceivable color and racial type, utter such an insensitive, mendacious comment?Several possibilities do come to mind. First, Bronfman's comment illustrates the bankruptcy of part of the efforts toward 'Jewish Continuity.' Now, I don't want to be misunderstood here. There are wonderful educational and communal efforts being made toward fighting assimilation and Jewish illiteracy throughout the Jewish World. All too often, however, 'Jewish Continuity' means: How can my children/grandchildren remain Jewish without doing anything about it (except, perhaps, by writing a check)? That's, essentially, what Bronfman is saying. Let's declare everybody Jewish (especially non-Jewish spouses) and the hell with the Jewish religion. Intermarriage is a source of strength, he asserts. Statistics show that only 3 out of every 10 children of intermaried couples see themselves as Jews (never mind that Conservative and Orthodox Jews still require traditional conversions) In that light, Bronfman is essentially calling for de facto assimilation. That, in turn, reminds me of something that Ber Borokhov once said that assimilation is to the Jew what suicide is for the individual. Declaring everyone Jewish, with absolutely no regard for the integrity of Jewish tradition, peoplehood, culture and history is nothing less than a call for suicide.

There's even more to it than that, but it will have to wait for a future posting.

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

Yesterday, while in Hevron, I was informed of the passing of a great man and a dear friend, Professor Yisrael Moshe Ta Shma, recipient of the 2003 Israel Prize in Talmud, after a long illness. He was a great scholar whose command of every aspect of rabbinic literature, in print and in manuscript was incredible. There will no doubt, be alot of discussion of his contributions to scholarship. I am writing a review of his last book for the journal Sidra, where I will write an appreciaton of his work.

In addition to being a world class scholar, Professor Ta Shma was a mensch and a true friend. In contrast to alot of academics, he was generous with his knowledge and with new ideas. Despite his incredible level of activity and scholarly output, he always had time to sit and talk and share his massive knowledge. I used to love sitting in his study and just drinking it all in.

He was a man of dignity and courage. The last four years were very difficult for him healthwise. Yet he faced these difficulties with fortitude and a wry sense of humor. Haval al de-avdin ve-lo mishtakhin. Yehi Zikhro Barukh ke-fi she-po'alo hu berakha.

I don't remember having a day that was filled with both sharp contrasts and profound typicality as was yesterday. In the morning, I went to Hevron with my brother and nephew. They had advertised a Klezmer/Carlebach minyan in the main sukkah, and the entire Me'arah was open for visitors. (The Isaac room is usually off limits to Jews). My nephew had never been to Hevron and we planned to show him the Avraham Avinu neighborhood, Tel Rumeida etc.

The service actually started out pleasantly. The singing was engaging and the atmosphere, uplifting. Too soon, however, it was marke with the typical Carlebachian affliction; lack of limits. I don't know why, but Carlebach people don't know when to stop. There are limits to everything, it seems, except singing and jumping. So, an hour long service was soon two hours. The heat rose. The Sukkah was stifling and these guys wouldn't stop! So we left after Torah reading and a quick Mussaf. What a missed opportunity. In stead of leaving on a high, I left annoyed. Typically, I recalled something that Professor Twersky once wrote, that Judaism is made up of a delicate balance of discipline and spirituality. Exclusive emphasis on the law leads to the fossilization of religion. Too much spirituality leads to chaos.

The cave itself was in spiring as usual, though I particularly like the Avraham Avinu shul. It was built by exiles from Spain in a typically Andalusian style. It has the type of intimate atmosphere that I love and frankly, I think I could have sat there all day and drunk in the atmosphere. Hevron was teeming with people who came on pilgrimage and to express their solidarity with the residents of the Jewish community and of nearby Qiryat Arba. It was a day of joy and silent determination.

That night we went to the wine festival in Rishon le-Zion. It was a huge, happy street fair with food, crafts and music. Three stages with popular, foregn and folk music. There was reall joy in the air. Most important, it was mobbed with: Ashkenazim and Sephardim, Haredim and Hilonim, Ethiopians and Russians, Settlers and Leftists. I looked around with not a small amount of wonder. Think about it. After four years of war, terror, blood, grief, and apprehension-they haven't broken us. On the contrary, the Israelis will not let the Palestinian terrorists steal our lives and our holidays. It's an honor to be part of such a sublimely aggravating people.